/run/media/silveradept: Assorted Misc, Etc.

[silveradept]

A couple of thoughts that maybe can be explored if I get them out on digital paper and let other people look at them:

• I would like someone who is not familiar at all with the universe of Within the Wires (the found recordings podcast created by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson) to read the book they put out, You Feel It Just Below The Ribs. I have a suspicion that its main narrative tension will read differently to someone who is new to the world than someone who has been listening from the beginning. (Or, at least, someone who has listened to the first season.) I think I can accurately call the novel Season 0, or, depending on where Black Box fits in the universe, since I'm not a Patreon subscriber, Season -1. It does a lot of work setting up the universe that the podcasts then explore, and so I'm curious to see if a new reader, or one familiar with the genre of literature that the book is about, gets the same messages out of it.


• I'd have to listen to it again, and probably more than a few times with specific ears on, and I still wouldn't be completely sure, but there's something interesting with the music direction of Encanto that makes me wonder how many unique melodic lines there are in the film. Each main character, I think, gets one melodic line to themselves and I think most, if not all, of the music is how well those melodic lines blend with each other when there are multiple singers. Since Lin-Manuel Miranda is involved, I wouldn't be surprised if "single melodies/motifs layered on top of each other" was intentional, given the themes of the movie about family and family working together and what that means.


• Have I recommended the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz to all of you recently? It's about sound design, so you'll hear a lot about how iconic sounds and jingles/network identifiers came into existence, but you'll also hear about specific technology (like the SM7 microphone), or the science of hearing and how sound works (with some neat demonstrations of how amplification and interference work), or the people who are listening all over the world for numbers stations and what they might entail. They've done Mel Blanc, Bronx cheers, John Cage's most famous work, the TR-808 drum machine, and several spotlights on what the world is like when you can't see anything and have to rely on your hearing to understand the world around you. Plus, there's the Mystery Sound in every episode, something that a person who is familiar with it recognizes instantly, but for others, might be one of those "hrm, I know I've heard that before, but I just can't quite place it." sounds. I'll admit, I haven't figured out as many of them as I might have been able to, but half the fun is trying to puzzle out what a sound might be if you don't immediately know it. (Although it'll never happen to me, because I'm sure there are more than enough listeners to the podcast that the random number generator disfavors me when I know the sound, there's also the possibility that if you guess the current mystery sound, you could win one of their T-shirts.)


• It's been interesting to watch eight seasons of RWBY over the years. Some of the storytelling over the years has gotten better as the technology that Rooster Teeth has had to work with has improved, which allows them to more closely deliver the envisioned ideas for the story. The effects work has increased and the style has stabilized over time (which, is, to some degree, why I think there's a reasonable Machete Order to watch the series in, to give someone a taste of what the series will become, then fill in the background of the why and then go forward, which right now seems to be 4-5, 1-2-3, 6-7-8) into a sort of mostly 3D but occasionally 2.5D kind of series. It's also grown into itself as the kind of story that can support two protagonists and their stories together.
  
  Right at tne end of the eighth season, though, we got to see the possibility of a person's Semblance evolving or unlocking new depths in the right kinds of circumstances, and I realize that has all sorts of interesting implications for the worldbuilding that we probably won't get to see unless it becomes important to the plot.
  
  I also kind of wonder how this series turns out in the alternate universe where Monty doesn't die but continues on to advise and showrun. The broad strokes are probably the same, but I wonder what kinds of details we would be different. And would it be the kind of story where the Wizard goes back behind the curtain, where the Tin Man has no Heart, the Cowardly Lion has no courage, and it's not looking like the Scarecrow has any brains, either.
  
  And, y'know, I feel like RWBY is a good example of what kinds of shows we could be making if we had a robust public domain, because so many of the characters are based in works that are in the public domain, so they can be riffed on without the lawyers coming to say hello. Imagine what we could have in this show if we had a much bigger reference pool to draw from.

Random thoughts for a random day. Take, leave, or expand as you like.

Comments

[anneapocalypse]

I may try and articulate my thoughts on it sometime. It's just kind of a sensitive subject because of the awful tragedy of Monty's death, and what he meant to a lot of people. It can get hard to separate that from a critical discussion of his work, so... it's just something I'd want to address thoughtfully.

I definitely agree on that target audience thing. I think that's the case with a lot of Rooster Teeth properties, but it really shows here.

You're making me curious to try rewatching the show in that order! It would be interesting to see how volume 4 comes across as the beginning of a journey you don't yet have the setup for. It definitely makes a certain kind of sense to me, because I've already begun to think of volumes 1-3 as more of a prologue to the story.

[silveradept]

Yeah. I think there's a lot of Monty that's tied up in his work as well, so separation may not be fully possible, but you might be able to hold it at arm's length?

There are probably a couple hiccups that you'll run across starting a watch from 4, probably related to some of the worldbuilding and backstory, but 4 starts with an action sequence that does a really good job of establishing the characters of JNRR and it mostly stays on them through the volume, so it's a small bit of storytelling that expands once you get to Haven. I think it'll be pretty smooth, but I have no idea of it'll work as well as I think it will.

[anneapocalypse]

...It would be interesting to see who a new viewer starting cold at V4 would take away as the "main characters" of the show. RNJR sort of takes center stage in that volume but Yang, Blake, and Weiss's individual arcs also get a fair amount of focus. Team RWBY's all there, but not as a team, whereas V4 does focus a lot on JN(P)R's dynamic as a team, including both Jaune's grief over Pyrrha, and the history that brought Nora and Ren together. (And I never thought until just now about the fact that both RWBY and JNPR have two team members who knew each other before Beacon.) Ruby while still being in the "team leader" position in V4 also has the least of an arc in that volume, which doesn't really change with watch order--but Ruby does start to get more development in V5, and then going back and watching 1-3 after that could cast that "Prologue" arc in a new light and perhaps make Ruby feel more dynamic as a character than she does with a straight chronological watch of the first two arcs.

[silveradept]

Starting at V4 would definitely cement the idea that I think was intended all along that Ruby and Jaune are both protagonists with separate but connected stories. Because V4 spends a lot more time developing JN_R into something other than "the team that's there to make up for when Jaune is a Butt-Monkey", I wouldn't be surprised if a new viewer comes out of 4-5 thinking that Jaune is much closer to being the primary protagonist that he actually is. And 4 much more firmly establishes why Nora stays extremely close to Ren (and why she feels so very comfortable invading his personal space and disrupting his attempt at Zen), even if it takes until 8, I think, for Ren to fully understand and admit what his feelings are about their relationship.

Starting with 4 might cast the team system in a different light if you're coming into it knowing that there's already been a situation where a team has been broken apart and reformed, and I think starting with 4-5 will also make 6-8 less jarring, since it also does a fair amount of team splitting, although that one is by choice of priorities rather than by circumstances, and while Jaune's leadership qualities are starting to show through in 4, he really hits his stride in 6-8, which gives The viewer a buffer between "he's coming into his own" and "he's got it" of "here's how he learned it, even if he didn't understand it fully at the time."

So, yeah, starting with 4 has much higher odds of Jaune being seen as a main character from the start, instead of someone promoted into the role.

[anneapocalypse]

I tend to think that Jaune wasn't necessarily intended to be a protagonist but became one because that is what happens when Miles Luna is writing his own voiced character (an observation which I draw from Red vs. Blue as well and which I say with affection because I do really like Miles Luna's work but that's a Thing He Does). Jaune's prominence in the story, however, is in my opinion far less frustrating from volume 4 onward, as it feels a lot more like he is working with the intended protagonist(s) rather than competing with them for screentime and character development, so I think starting from Volume 4 has the potential to make Jaune more compelling and sympathetic as well as Ruby. By Volume 6, the main characters are definitely RWBYJNR (with a side of Q) with Ruby and Jaune in leadership roles, and that is also where I think the plot really hits its stride, and no longer feels in tension with who the main characters are supposed to be.

[anneapocalypse]

Aside: Oscar should join team JNR, and then they could be ORNJ! :D

[silveradept]

I feel like it's already team ORNJ from about volume 6, except Oscar emphatically does not want the leadership role, so it would have to be something like Team JRNO or something.

[silveradept]

I'll take that observation.

Volumes 1-3 are written more like a Shakespearean tragedy, and JNPR is there to be the comedy team that shows up in between the heavy parts and give us something to laugh at, mostly in the form of Jaune. But then the big tragedy happens to the comedy team at the end of 3, and that's when the show shifts gears from Shakespeare to something more like a buddy cop show. (Which usually makes Nora the comedy character, unless someone needs to get hit in the boulders with boulders, that's still Jaune's department.) Once the show changes over to being a story that can handle an ensemble cast with a couple of more protagonist-y people to make decisions, it all goes a lot better. Everyone gets room to breathe and develop as themselves, rather than the development being limited to Ruby, Girl Genius, and Jaune, Iron Butt-Monkey.

(Everyone on Remnant needs a hug.

[anneapocalypse]

That's a good way of putting it! The ensemble cast has really been working for me in the latest arc in particular, with teamwork or lack thereof being a huge theme, and it plays with both Ruby and Jaune, whose primary character flaws from day one have been that they were unprepared to be leaders--Jaune for obvious reasons, Ruby for the more complicated reason that for all her precocity she lacked interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, something she has been grappling with in earnest since volume 5. Jaune has also been grappling, in other ways, and I really enjoyed the acknowledgment in v8 of how far he's come.

[silveradept]

Yes. Ruby makes a lot of the kids who were promoted up a grade or two (of who could have been) have sympathy for her, because she might well have needed those extra two years at Signal to develop some friendships and get experience working with other people in various capacities. Normal knees and all that. She doesn't know how to handle internal conflict, and none of the adults around her are modeling it in any way that she can use. (Maybe Maria is, but she's not doing a good job of it, given the ease at which she gets Caroline to fight them.)

Jaune is such a complex character, once the limiters of being the slapstick guy come off. How much of that is Miles and how much was intended is an open question, of course. But he has to deal with legacy burdens from his family and from being the only son in the family, the specific way that he got into Beacon, the unique way that he understands just how traumatized everyone, including himself, is, and the burden he took upon himself after volume 3 to do what Pyrrha couldn't. Jaune wants to be a hero and the entire world is conspiring against him on that desire. He lost his mentor too early, his Semblance is all wrong for heroics, and he didn't even register enough on his opponent's radar to be remembered on a second confrontation. Which makes what Ren said about him right after his own Semblance upgraded all that more interesting - is Jaune fearless because he's finally got the attitude of a hero, or is he fearless because there's no attachments keeping him in the world?

It's also interesting to see the setup between Ruby as strategic leader with the plan and Jaune as the tactical leader who figures out how to gain and hold advantage once the plan actually makes contact.

Ensemble cast rules, though! I like the way it lets two or more narrative threads weave in with each other toward the payoff where they all end up in the same place, stronger and wiser than they were before they separated.